Quick Trip Home

We made a quick, 5-day trip from Australia back Columbus, and back to Australia again. We were originally meant to depart Australia for good on April 27th, but are now staying on until the end of July. Because of the extension, we went home to check on the house, swap out the wardrobe, visit family and friends, and arrange from the neighbors to look after things for another three months. We are blessed to have so many wonderful people in our life that we can depend upon - cheers to you all!

I have updated the blog home page with our address if anyone is tempted to send us anything. We have found that it takes about two weeks for mail to make it overseas.

I am also posting a few photos of our trip back to Oz. The trip went quite smoothly - the 14 hour leg from San Francisco was about half full so we were able to luxuriate in the extra space in back. I don't think United made a profit on this flight.


Our ship getting ready for the voyage


Getting ready to board (sorry for it being sideways)



Captain Pilutti at the controls


If you ask hard enough they actually let you fly

What's the difference between boogie boarding and insanity?

I spent today (Saturday) working hard in the apartment on the desal project while casting longing gazes out the window to the ocean outside. The sun has been shining for the first time all week and the waves were spectacular. I decided to take a break from work and spend a little time riding my board. On the way I saw a guy returning from the beach with a broken board. When I got to the beach I could see why - the waves were 2-4 meters at North Cronulla. I decided to venture on down to South Cronulla and try my luck there as the waves are usually a bit smaller. They were still about 3 meters there so I went out and caught a few. The photos below show the difference between boogie boarding and insanity.


Boogie boarding at Shark Island (Cronulla)


Insanity at Shipstern Bluff (Tasmania)

Cronulla is a beautiful place to live. I have tried to capture its beauty myself with photographs, but haven't been able to do much with my Fuji Finepix camera. There is a website, http://www.oceanart.com.au/ where you can browse and purchase professional photographs of not only Cronulla, but other lovely places around Australia. Here are a few samples.

Cronulla Park. There is a great ice cream shop here that we like to frequent.

Mossy rocks at North Cronulla Beach. We go walking along here nearly every day.

Surfers at sunrise. I like to go surfing here too.


Cronulla from the water


Cronulla from the water. Our home is the building behind the pine trees.

Sunrise at Wanda Beach. We went there last night.

Rock pool between North and South Cronulla Beach

Sunrise at North Cronulla Beach


Cronulla at sunrise


Rock pool at sunrise. This is where I learned how to paddle around on a surf board before I took it out into open water.


Cronulla sunrise


Rock pool again


South Cronulla Beach. This is where they did the Shark Island Challenge. Also got some good waves here last week on my boogie board. Great family beach.



South Cronulla Beach. This is where we sat to watch the fireworks.


South Cronulla Beach again




Surfers at sunrise


Surfer at sunrise

Last weekend we surprised the kids with a trip to Symbio, a local wildlife park where you can view and interact with all kinds of great creatures. We fed kangaroos, gave the koalas a pat, and saw a cassowary (among other things). We learned that koalas are endangered and that over 99% of the koala population has been lost in recent years mostly due to habitat destruction by humans. We also learned that the Tasmanian Devil, the only carnivorous marsupial, is also endangered and projected to be extinct by 2015. If you ever make a trip to Sydney I suggest you give Symbio a visit.

The cassowary is the largest land animal in Australia and can be found in the rainforests of tropical North Queensland. I hope I never accidentally run into one while tromping though the rain forest as a swipe from one of its massive talons could easily kill a human, or at least make the human wish it were dead. In any case it is quite an impressive bird. Here is a video that shows a cassowary.

Easter Weekend

Happy Easter to all! Easter weekend in Australia is a big event. The Friday before and the Monday after are public holidays which means everyone gets busy with traveling and having barbeques. Travelers queued up by the thousands at 5 AM at the airport to catch their flights and petrol prices went up fifteen cents a liter. I rode my board Friday and Saturday and caught some great waves. On Saturday night we went to the fireworks show down by the beach. And then on Sunday one of my coworkers had a barbeque where several families from work enjoyed the day having wine and champagne, an easter egg hunt, and rugby on the beach. Cheers for now!

Boogie boarding

Fireworks at South Cronulla Beach

Fireworks at South Cronulla Beach

Fireworks at South Cronulla Beach

Sunrise in our front yard

Cronulla Shark Island Challenge

Every year there is an event in Cronulla called the Shark Island Swim Challenge. There are two separate races. The first race goes for 1 km, starts at the Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club and goes out around some buoys that look way too far out from shore. The second race also starts at the life saving club, and goes all the way out around Shark Island. This second race is over 2 km. Needless to say I didn't do either race, but I managed to eat a nice bacon and egg roll and snapped a few photographs. Over 1600 people participated in both races including some folks from Blue Water (Blue Water is the joint venture that is designing, building, and operating the desalination plant). Blue water was kind enough to set up a table at the race and sponsor drinks and brekkie for any interested employees. For anyone who is interested in where the heck it is that we live and where the race was, here are the coordinates you can enter into Google Earth:

Our apartment: 34° 3'3.89"S 151° 9'14.41"E

Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club: 34° 3'20.42"S 151° 9'16.64"E

Shark Island: 34° 3'35.69"S 151° 9'34.54"E

Cronulla Park and the life saving club

Blue Water Participants

The race begins

The race begins part 2

The winner approaches the finish line

We hired a surf board from the local surf shop and headed for the beach. We arrived at the beach and to our astonishment the sea looked like glass. A local commented that it was the calmest conditions she had seen in 15 years. This turned out to be ideal for beginning surfers! Jack was the first to give it a go and was quite skilled at balancing and had a good couple of runs. Steffi, meanwhile, got dumped off the boogie board and was nursing her bruised ego and side. She quickly recovered and took her turn at balancing and jumping off the surf board into the waves. It was then my turn...I soon learned that balancing on a board was much more difficult than it looked and standing up required a great deal more upper body strength than I posess. I did have a good time entertaining Mike and riding in a wave or two flat on my belly. I will likely stick to the boogie board in the future. There are no pictures of Mike this day, but we did get some good ones a few weeks back when he took a real surfing lesson! Check them out as well!